Oscarsson, Jan

University of Skövde, School of Engineering Science. University of Skövde, The Virtual Systems Research Centre. (Produktion och Automatiseringsteknik, Production and Automation Engineering)ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9690-890X

Jeusfeld, Manfred A.

University of Skövde, School of Informatics. University of Skövde, The Informatics Research Centre. (Information Systems)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9421-8566

Abstract [en]

Product lifecycle management (PLM) systems maintain amongst others the specifications and designs of product, process and resource artefacts and thus serve as the basis for realizing the concept of Virtual Manufacturing, and play a vital role in shortening the leadtimes for the engineering processes. Design of new products requires numerous experiments and test-runs of new facilities that delays the product release and causes high costs if performed in the real world. Virtualization promises to reduce these costs by simulating the reality. However, the results of the simulation must predict the real results to be useful. This is called virtual confidence. We propose a knowledge base approach to capture and maintain the virtual confidence in simulation results. To do so, the provenance of results of real, experimental and simulated processes are recorded and linked via confirmation objects.